Saturday, May 23, 2015

[Updated 9:59 p.m.] This blog has been following for years the outrageous attempt to build a costly expansion of State Highway 23 connecting Fond du Lac and Plymouth - - posts, for example here, and here.Now we are learning about a huge win in Federal court against the use of federal funds to pay for the Highway 23 project, so hat tip to 1000 Friends of Wisconsin - - and here is the group's news release about it - - for sticking with the issue.
And we really need to learn a lot more about how this $146 million boondoggle found its way into the budget and the so-called "enumeration" process about 15 years ago by which road projects in Wisconsin are selected, as this news story disclosed:

The U.S. Eastern District Court on Friday halted a road project that would have expanded Highway 23 into a four-lane highway between Fond du Lac and Plymouth...

According to the 26-page court decision by District Judge Lynn Adelman, an environmental impact statement released by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation failed to justify higher traffic volumes or explain how recently updated demographic data (slower growth projections) might affect traffic projections...

An internal DOT email quoted in the ruling states: "This project was placed in the budget by a certain legislator. That legislator either got the project into the budget in a trade for support or something else ... given that it happened behind closed doors and outside the (Transportation Projects Commission) there are no rules."

Note also the similarities in the ruling to Judge Adelman's earlier rulings in cases involvingWisDOT and its deficient planning and spending on State Highway 164 west of Milwaukee and on I-94 expansion in the Zoo Interchange at the Milwaukee County/Waukesha County border where WisDOT left out transit improvements for low-income residents with access to cars.

5 comments:

James, we are prevailing in our state-wide attempt to control WisDOT. This victory follows the federal court which forced WisDOT to settle a lawsuit about lack of access to suburban jobs, and the failure of WisDOT to include transit in the ZOO interchange.

If anyone wants to help, you can reach me in my website where the coalition is posting our long long list of media successes. We are NOT done with the budget; we will not be done if we fail with the budget.

James, I should add this: The Coalition for More Responsible Transportation is a state-wide effort to prevent the wasteful widening of I94 in Milwaukee. Yes, fix it, make it safe. But what that transportation corridor really needs is solutions to urban needs, not suburban motorists.

We are asking the DOT to return to the drawing board. No widening. A transit component in its plan. And, yes, we are finding the DOT numbers out of line with the present, and certainly the future (as the State ages).

Jim, as the attorney for the plaintiffs in this case, I reviewed the 25,000+ page administrative record prepared by the WisDOT on this project. The identity of the "certain legislator" who placed Highway 23 onto the enumeration list in the budget bill many years ago does not appear. As you know, these sorts of things happen in closed caucus sessions in the early hours of the morning, when no one is watching, and usually, specifically because no one can be watching.

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"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.

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James Rowen's Bio

James Rowen, a writer and consultant, has worked for newspapers, and as the senior Mayoral staffer, in Madison and Milwaukee, WI. This blog began on 2/2/ 2007. Posts run also at various news sites, including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Purple Wisconsin."